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The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

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Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#171

Post by em-bee »

darkwater wrote: post #115

Since I'm in the process of seeking a job, I would like to share a somehow related experience in one technical interview, this time for a senior DevOps role. So, after the initial introductions and talking a bit about infra as code with Terraform, they interviewer asked a question: "What would you use if you cannot use Terraform for a project?" To which I initially answered, since it was a SENIOR position, with a war…

are you sure it was the answer for the first question? i went through a fast paced interview recently. i was told that it would be fast paced and the interviewer did cut me off when i gave an answer like that for a different question, but i can't imagine that that would be the reason to reject me. (i didn't know all the answers so it was fair in my case)

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#172

Post by [deleted] »

quectophoton wrote: post #34
bowsamic wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That isn’t much money, even for Europe

50k EUR/year for me would be like 2900 EUR/month after all taxes. Monthly expenses in the part of Spain I live in are ~800 EUR (rent + food + electricity + water + 1Gbps internet). 2900 - 800 = 2100 EUR to do whatever I want with. Even if I decide to put half of that into savings, that's still ~1000 EUR to spend freely, and any unspent money would go into savings too at the end of the month. Or in other words: With a…

[deleted]

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#173

Post by joshuaissac »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #142
grajaganDev wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would any developer be a good match for that company? My judgment is that this company has no idea of what they are doing. Not uncommon for companies with under 50 employees.

They know exactly what they're doing. The code, while clever, is bad for understandability, extensibility, and debuggability. They tried throughout the interview to get the candidate to do something else, and he ignored all advice and hints. If this even happened at all. It sounds like a "just so" work of fiction.

The rules that they added, like the ban on mathematical operations, made it clear that they were not looking for understandable code. His code could handle new rules without a problem, so extensibility was not a problem either.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#174

Post by intelVISA »

pjmlp wrote: post #150
bowsamic wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fair enough I’m just saying I live in Germany and just entered my first software position and get 73k, and I don’t live in Berlin or anything. I suppose in Spain living expenses are much cheaper. Your monthly expenses including food are less than my rent. Tho I still think I have more than 2100 left over after expenses

I am active in DACH space since 2003, and I am surprised that isn't between 50k and 60k for a junior position. More to you, but that isn't a common entry level, at least for companies whose main business isn't selling software.

DACH is like the reverse Silicon Valley?

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#175

Post by whstl »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #170
sjducb wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

At work, would you rather have a boss that makes you implement dumb ideas? Or would you prefer a boss who recognises that your idea is better, then rewards you for it? You are interviewing them too. I would also have hired the candidate.

If you're building some sort of basic, crud app you shouldn't hire this candidate, or at least recognize they are a project - is that what you want? But if you're doing anything unique, or experimental they might be a great fit. Most of us are doing the second.

I mean, the interview requirements are quirky and unconventional as heck.

Anyone saying "you gotta check divisibility without math" on the job would get laughed out of the room.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#176

Post by whstl »

skeeter2020 wrote: post #155
whstl wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This rule alone would make me walk out: "New rules will be revealed one by one. The candidate should note them as there won’t be shown again" This feels more like a Squid Game parody than an interview. I interview people from all walks of life. I would definitely not have hired some of the best engineers I worked with if I was trying to be too clever and quirky when giving out requirements.

> if I was trying to be too clever and quirky... You buried your lede IMO. The interviewers had this cute game and when the developer didn't play by the planned rules (build up a monsterous collections of branching on top of a for loop) they were screwed. Issues: * rules revealed one by one. Spec changes and is always incomplete, but you never even hear about changing spec that your existing solution already handles.…

Yeah, this was definitely a case of the interviewer looking for its soulmate.

It is frustrating but it's not personal, it's just someone bad at their job.

This only happened once to me: I got a feedback of "jumped straight into a cloud-based solution". The funny part is that it was a company that made tooling for cloud services. Naturally they went bust.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#177

Post by wakawaka28 »

joshuaissac wrote: post #173
wakawaka28 wrote: post #142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They know exactly what they're doing. The code, while clever, is bad for understandability, extensibility, and debuggability. They tried throughout the interview to get the candidate to do something else, and he ignored all advice and hints. If this even happened at all. It sounds like a "just so" work of fiction.

The rules that they added, like the ban on mathematical operations, made it clear that they were not looking for understandable code. His code could handle new rules without a problem, so extensibility was not a problem either.

Near the top of the article:

>While the base algorithm is very simple, the point of the exercise is that the interviewer will add new rules to test how you update the code while keeping it readable and maintainable.

As for this:

>His code could handle new rules without a problem, so extensibility was not a problem either.

Ok, now I want you to query a database at runtime and write the output to a file instead if the number is in the database. Good luck with adapting this type-theory solution, and good luck with debugging this crap. It's a PhD-level solution to a freshman-level problem, that is very atypical and uses niche features of the language that might fail unexpectedly due to language limitations.

On top of all of that, the story sounds like fiction as well. But who knows.

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#178

Post by TomMasz »

constantcrying wrote: post #61

What a genuinely terrible interview. Seems like a great way to learn absolutely nothing about the candidate. I would have walked out half way through. These types of questions are very telling of an organization which is extremely insecure in its own abilities. For anyone who is a somewhat experienced programmer it is not hard to tell if someone else knows what he is talking about. You do not need to waste 45 minutes…

Designed to weed out anyone who might not follow orders. Was this a cult?

Re: The FizzBuzz that did not get me the job

#179

Post by constantcrying »

wakawaka28 wrote: post #164
constantcrying wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The way you figure these things out is talking about them. Plenty of people like to solve challenges in weird ways and might even see the suggestions that it is inappropriate as a challenge. >There are not really multiple ways to read "I don't think that's a good idea" in an interview. If your "technical depth" leads you to an inappropriate solution, it doesn't matter if it's right. Just because this solution worked…

>Plenty of people like to solve challenges in weird ways and might even see the suggestions that it is inappropriate as a challenge. That's absolutely not the way to approach an interview. "Let me try to do things the exact way you clearly don't want, just to see if we can." Is the candidate going to try to do their next job this way? What are you going to do when their egotistical attempts to solve problems in cleve…

>The whole point of the interview is to get hints about the candidate.

Which it didn't accomplish at all, because the interviewers refused to do the single most important thing. Actually talking with their candidate about these things. Instead they are relying on psychoanalysis to divine some secret meaning in his actions.

I am not arguing that your interview shouldn't try to figure out the personality or professional approach of a person, but that this particular interview made it near impossible to do so. Simply because they refused to talk about the things they wanted to know.

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